Interkosmos

Weirdass American filmmaker Finn’s space race mockumentary is no more or less than the sum of its laborious and charming parts. Taking the false premise that East Germany had its own space program in the 1970s, Interkosmos is an unwieldy mesh of superbly realised faked up footage, bizarre musical interludes and truly ridiculous stop frame animation. Despite being fun and quirky, Finn’s film actually says more about his fanboy zeal for the complete works of Douglas Adams (there are way too many shots of dolphins here) than it does about anything more intergalactic. Jim Becker and Colleen Burke’s delightful score puts one in mind of underrated German easy listening acts Kuno and the Marihuana Brass and Eugen Thomass. Despite some exceptionally annoying longeurs this is the kind of movie a Krauted up Flaming Lips would make in one of their more controlled moments. All of which augers well for Finn’s dramatic feature debut proper Second Moon, which could get a release as early as next year. (Paul Dale)